I promise you
by Jemmiah
Summary: A dangerous mission and a new responsibility for QuiGon and ObiWan.


TITLE: I Promise You

*******************

Qui-Gon's head snapped up suddenly as he heard the alarms go off. They'd been found out. He pulled Obi-Wan to his feet from where they had been hiding amongst the bushes. 

"Get back to the ship. Tell Master Ashdal to stand by to take off. NOW!" He knelt down by the young girl who was still breathing heavily after their cross-country escape. "Go with Obi-Wan. He'll make sure you're safe. I'm going to stay here and see if I can't slow them down a bit."

The girl nodded and picked herself up from the ground following his apprentice at a fast clip towards the ship.

If only my padawan were as obedient, he thought ruefully.

From some distance away he heard the whine of an approaching swoop. No, more like two. Qui-Gon readied himself, lightsabre in hand. This was make or break time…

****************************

Rufus Merdan paced the floor.

He knew that the game was almost up. Once the truth of his scam came out there would be swift retribution from the Republic and the best he could look forward to was an entire lifetime behind bars. Not for the first time he cursed the fact he hadn't recognised the two Jedi for what they were sooner than he had. And when he'd had the opportunity to remove them he'd let it slip by. Such shoddiness was going to lead to the end of his very profitable little venture.

Nine years. He'd been on Nargotria for nine years. A singularly unattractive little planet with very little to recommend it other than the charms of it's inhabitants. Some had been slaves. Some had simply nowhere better to go. Most of them had been abducted and forced to stay.

For as long as their looks remained.

Merdan had made such an inspection of his 'camp' last week. He saw himself as a gardener, attending his prize roses and plucking out the weeds. Two of the female 'workers' had failed to come up to his standard of attractiveness and he'd taken them outside and shot them out of hand.

Nobody would miss them.

His little harem was a well kept secret from the Republic, but was known within certain circles as a stopping off point for shady characters and frustrated business men alike. There was no accounting for some people's tastes, but they catered for all sorts on Nargotria. It hadn't been difficult to get guards to volunteer to strand themselves on this dust bowl. The perks of the job had been very inticing.

There were thirty-four women in total on Nargotria. No, he amended. Thirty-two now. There had been many, many more at one point but a strange wasting illness had spread amongst the women and some of the guards and so he'd been forced to dispose of anyone who sickened or even looked as if they were showing any symptoms of the disease. 

The eldest of the survivors was aged roughly fifty although she didn't look it. As well for her she didn't, he thought coldly. The youngest was a girl of about nine. She'd been snatched from a high-class private transport with her mother and brother some four years earlier whilst heading back to Corellia. They'd kept the woman, of course, but the boy was of no use to them and so he'd had him removed. He'd toyed with the idea of killing the girl as well, but changed his mind at the last moment.

Some clients liked them young.

All of this was immaterial now. If he didn't succeed in stopping the Jedi then he would have to abandon his enterprise and start up all over again in some other place. Preferably one that hadn't just joined the Republic.

Two guards bounded through the doorway and came to a sliding halt.

"We've lost our two swoops." Said the first guard with a sour expression upon his face.

"Lost?" 

"Transmission cut out suddenly. That's what I mean by lost." He growled.

Merdan eyed him for a moment. 

"How careless." He said carefully, before shooting the guard in the neck.

He eyed the body dispassionately as it lay on the floor. One more in a long line of bodies in this place. It hardly mattered.

"I want every woman rounded up outside in the yard. See to it." He said coolly. "And I suggest you don't lose any of them."

The second guard looked at the lifeless form of his companion and took his meaning.

**************************************

"Master!" Obi-Wan stared in alarm as Qui-Gon hurried up the ramp. "Your head…"

"I'm fine, Obi-Wan. A piece of shrapnel flew off one of the swoops when I cut it down." He swiped at the injury with the back of his hand and was not surprised to see it come away sticky and wet with blood. "I'll see to it after we've taken off."

"Master Jinn!" The voice of Vernice Ashdal floated back towards him from the pilot's seat. "Someone's trying to communicate with us. They're trying all frequencies."

Jinn blinked in surprise. 

"On my way." He shouted, urging his padawan up towards the front of the ship.

Something told him this wasn't over yet.

***************************************

Merdan glanced round at the sea of women huddled anxiously infront of him. For a short time he just walked up and down, backwards and forwards, taking in their features. Some looked scared. Others looked dignified and determined to face anything that was thrown at them. They'd seen enough degradation to last them five lifetimes.

Eyeing them for a last time, Merdan turned to the second man who had burst into his room earlier with the news of the Jedi's escape.

"I want a headcount." He demanded finally.

Several of the women glanced nervously at each other as the guard walked up and down herding them into rows, mentally ticking them off. It was only a matter of time now.

"Thirty one." The guard replied after a couple of minutes.

"Is that right." Merdan raised a dark eyebrow. "Thirty one. You seem to have lost one of them." He turned to the guard and blasted him in the stomach, amidst general screaming and pandemonium from the women. The man seemed to stare in complete shock before he too went down with smoke streaming from his vest.

"I want to know what happened to the missing person." Merdan raised his voice from its usual silky, deadly silence.

"The girl's missing." Another guard put in.

Merdan glanced about as if trying to magically conjure the child up. 

"And where is she?" He asked one of the women at the front of the line.

"She's gone." She replied defiantly. "The Jedi have her now and you won't be able to ruin her life like you did her poor mother and every other miserable vrelt in this place that you care to call your workforce."

"The Jedi have her?" He said.

Well, now there was no choice but to abandon this place. There was little chance of their staying after the Jedi had escaped but armed with a witness to the goings on in this camp everything had been lost.

"Too bad." He replied to the woman. "Too bad for me, and for you. And definitely for her."

Walking away from the group, he nodded over to another one of the guards. "Have you got the frequency yet?" He asked.

"Yes, sir."

Good, thought Merdan. Let's see if they like their little farewell present.

*********************************

Qui-Gon, Vernice Ashdal and Obi-Wan crowded round the holo screen. 

Jinn had never felt so relieved to be leaving a planet behind him at the end of a mission. Yes, they'd been successful, even if they had discovered Merdan's scam by accident whilst on their real task for the council. They'd managed to find out what the situation on the planet was. They'd even brought one of the 'damned' out with him. But it wasn't enough. One person.

Just one.

The look on the child's face when one of the women had told her she was to go and leave them all behind almost broke his heart. But she never cried once.

"I want her to smile again." The middle-aged woman had said. "She has such a pretty smile. Please make sure she laughs like she used to do."

Qui-Gon didn't think it would be easy to make good that promise. There had been so much suffering. That was why it felt so very bad to leave everyone else down there.

"Getting a picture." Ashdal blinked her golden eyes.

The scene infront of Qui-Gon as relayed to him via the holo screen was one that left him confused and apprehensive. He was aware that behind him the little Corellian girl had unstrapped herself from her seat in the crew area and was standing behind his padawan.

The female 'workers' were lined up in rows facing Rufus Merdan, who stood with his arms flexing by his side. As the coldly handsome man faced the holo transmitter, Qui-Gon saw the young girl jump back in shock.

"Master Jedi, I assume you can see this." He indicated the assembly behind him. "Can you hear me?"

"I can." Qui-Gon breathed. "What do you want. If your planning on using the women as hostages then…"

"Nothing could be further from my mind." He replied. "I just want you to know that just because you took the Gleshan girl away doesn't mean that I won't find her eventually. Nobody takes what's mine."

"This child does not belong to you." Jinn found himself shouting.

"Yes, well. We shall see about that." Merdan looked down, seemingly inspecting his fingernails. "I'm going to have to close down my little operation here thanks to you." He stared directly at the screen. "And your Corellian rat."

He paused for a good ten seconds before continuing. 

"So know this. Everything that happens here is your fault. Yours and the girl's. And be assured of one thing. I will find her. If it takes me twenty years to do it. I'm a very patient man."

He turned his back on the screen so quickly that it seemed like a blur. 

And then he opened fire.

Qui-Gon stared in complete shock as he watched every single figure amongst the group of women cut down by blaster fire. For a brief moment his numbed brain didn't quite register what he was seeing. Obi-Wan had lowered his eyes to the ground to avoid the spectacle whilst Vernice Ashdal had hidden her head in her hands.

The girl was still watching the screen.

Qui-Gon made a move towards her but she stepped to one side, still watching the grim scene.

"Switch it off!" Jinn commanded Ashdal. He tried to block the girl's view by cutting the screen off from her sight.

Jemmiah couldn't believe it. Nobody left.

All gone.

The last thing she saw before the screen cut off was Rufus Merdan turning round to face the screen, with eyes that chilled her heart and froze the blood in her veins.

Qui-Gon knelt down to her height. She was just ten years of age but looked more like somebody three or more years younger. It was a horrific sight for a person of any age to witness. He could see Obi-Wan shaking slightly as the padawan stood with his white knuckles clutching on the back of the pilot's chair.

"There's nobody left." She said in a small voice.

Qui-Gon regarded her with shining eyes. "Yes, there is." He said, tucking away a tangled strand of reddish-brown hair with his large hands. "There's you." He observed the small face as her eyes returned to the floor. "Coruscant is more than safe. Nobody will harm you there. You have my promise on that."

For a moment she said nothing and Qui-Gon wondered if his words would even sink in after the terrible ordeal she had just been through. Eventually, she raised her eyes to meet his.

"You've hurt your head." She said, getting out the handkerchief that one of the women had given to her as a keepsake and reaching out to apply it to his head.

"I'll get the medi kit." Obi-Wan had finally found his voice, excusing himself hurriedly from the room.

Qui-Gon smiled. "Thank you." He said, amazed at the gesture from the girl.

"Is Coruscant really safe?" She asked after a while.

He nodded. "Yes. Nothing can happen whilst your at the temple. If anyone tries anything," he said, wrapping her in a small hug, "Master Yoda will hit them with his stick."

"Who is Master Yoda?" Jemmiah asked.

"I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise." Qui-Gon replied with a half laugh.

As he held her, he wondered how this was going to turn out. A non-Jedi in the temple was almost unheard of. Qui-Gon sighed inwardly as he realised he might have to take the council on yet again if he wanted to keep this girl with him. But he couldn't go back on his word. If he had to fight them, he would.

He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't.


End file.
